The World; Affirmative Action, Chinese Style, Makes Some Progress

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: March 31, 1991

JINGHONG, China—
SOME years ago, when three Red Guards tried to carry the Cultural Revolution to a village inhabited by the Yao ethnic minority, the Yao peasants dealt with the annoyance in a traditional way: they bound the Red Guards and prepared to slaughter them as a human sacrifice. Yao elders eventually managed the release of the young revolutionaries, but the incident left a lasting impression of the delicacy of relations with China's ethnic minorities.

While China is often regarded abroad as a homogeneous nation, some 8 percent of the population is made up of members of 55 minorities. Tibetans are the best-known minority -- and an often-cited example of acrimony and repressiveness in the Government's handling of relations with minority groups. But the Xishuangbanna District of southwest China is perhaps more representative, and certainly more successful, in the way it has managed ethnic minorities.

The villages around the local capital of Jing hong are full of members of various ethnic groups, wearing distinctive bright clothing and speaking their own languages. Fights sometimes erupt when one village believes another is trying to steal its land or its women, but none of the groups is known to have formed a political underground or to have called for independence.

In general, relations with the 25 significant ethnic minorities here in Yunnan Province in Southwestern China appear to be relatively trusting.

"There are a lot of minority problems here, but they're not political as in Tibet," Shen Qirong, a spokesman for the Nationality Affairs Commission Yunnan Province, said in an interview in the provincial capital of Kunming. "There've been no calls for independence or separatism, and the problems that arise are in isolated areas, and then they pass. They're not systemic."

In Tibet and the far western region of Xinjiang, ethnic tensions have led to clashes with the authorities and to independence movements. But many diplomats say that in general, China has managed its other ethnic minorities in an enlightened manner, granting them special privileges to co-opt them into the system. Two years ago, at about the same time that students demanding democracy were shot, Chinese Moslems demonstrated to protest a book that they said defamed them. The authorities responded not by crushing the demonstrations but by arresting the author and banning the book. To be sure, the Moslems were demanding not democracy but suppression of another viewpoint, but the fact that the Chinese listened to the protest at all is an indication of how seriously the ethnic groups are treated.

Outside of Tibet and Xinjiang, where some diplomats expect the separatist movements eventually to triumph, China's policy toward minorities has been quite effective. The largest ethnic minority, for example, are the Zhuang, with a population of 15.5 million concentrated in south-central China, but the Zhuang have been partly assimilated and do not cause problems for the Government. The 4.8 million Mongols have also been politically quiet, despite concerns that upheavals in the neighboring country of Mongolia would trigger unrest among them.

"China is much more conscious of minorities as groups than most developing countries," said a Western diplomat in Beijing. "They have an amazingly well defined minority policy and program. You can criticize it, because they don't have real power or because it's often window-dressing. But there are efforts to bring minorities into high-profile positions, which has its own value because then they begin to serve as role models."

In Yunnan, one reason for the relative contentment seems to be the preferential treatment given to members of minority groups. Typically, ethnic minorities are allowed to marry earlier than members of the Han ethnic majority, and, most important, to have more children. Their children can also get into universities with lower examination scores than are required of Han students, and model members of minorities are chosen to fill prominent Government posts. The Governor of Yunnan Province, for example, is a member of the Naxi minority.

Because of the affirmative action policy, some families that in the past had tried to assimilate into the Han majority are now applying for declarations that they are members of a minority, and not Han, so that their children will have a better chance of getting into the universities.

In Jinghong, a young man who was registered as Han, and was thus allowed to have only one child, was disappointed when the child was a daughter. He checked his geneology, found some Dai minority ancestors, and re-registered himself as a Dai so that he could try to have a son.

Some Han complain that the preferences are unfair, but there is little noticeable resentment against affirmative action policies in China.

A main source of tension in Xishuangbanna in recent years has been the establishment of state-owned rubber plantations in minority areas. Nearby villages complain that the plantations take their land, and village children get in fights with the children of the Han Chinese plantation workers. The fights escalate, and the police sometimes are beaten when they try to intervene.

"Those tensions have declined dramatically," said Tian Jiaxiang, who is a Dai and deputy governor of Xishuangbanna. He said, and some local villagers agreed, that the disputes had been reduced by readjusting land and giving villagers a share of the income from the plantations.

Some members of ethnic minorities grumble that the fundamental problem is that many Han are arrogant and look down on other people. The authorities acknowledge that this is a problem, but they also note that there is growing intermarriage between Han and the minorities and suggest that this shows an increasing mutual respect.

Photo: Members of the Bai minority in China's Yunnan Province. (Mary Beth Camp/Matrix)